


Pieces

by saarebitch



Category: Divinity: Original Sin (Video Games)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 16:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14192673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saarebitch/pseuds/saarebitch
Summary: Linna is always on the lookout for a new puzzle to unravel, but she may have met her match in the strange visage of Malady.





	Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> A one shot commission for @drathe on tumblr. Linna is her Godwoken, who happens to have a very slow burn with ol' Mals. ;)

Living things were fascinating.

They were diverse and unique; individual and determined. Every one of them had their own story, and every one of them would leave their stories behind for the future to read. 

Because all living things eventually became dead things, and dead things left such interesting tales.

The expression of what they were manifested in so many different ways. Sometimes there would be an old bauble that had been passed down through a great maternal line, only for it to be lost and buried under eons of earth. That particular bauble told the story of a well-to-do young woman, whose powerful maternal line had coddled her to the point of absent-mindedness, and a once precious signet of a indomitable family was left in the grass one day on a silly whim, then forgotten once the oblivious young woman returned to her sprawling estates.

Other times, the expression of life was told through a calcified pile of bones, surrounded by clay tablets full of poetry. Or with a full suit of armor sheltering a skeleton with a mighty spear lodged between its ribs. Perhaps even a woman nestled in a grave, with all her trappings of life nestled closely nearby and her long, tangled white hair darkened by the loamy soil in which she found her final rest.

Linna had liked that story with the white haired woman. Her corpse had been curled up like a babe in her mother’s womb. Maybe she had even faced her death like a child. Scared and lonely, clinging to things familiar to her before closing her eyes. The empty copper pots and the tattered linens and the wooden carving of a duck…perhaps they all had comforted her in her final moments. 

She had been intrigued because it was unusual. Most graves in Hunter’s Edge had the dead laid out like a plank, straight and rigid. When she dug up the old woman and took the copper pots inside, she was surprised to see her snuggled up. Linna sold the copper pots --along with the other goods she had got from that site-- but found herself wandering back. Hunters’s Edge’s ruins had long since been abandoned, and Linna had time to spare, so she stayed there. Stayed until she could figure it out.

It didn’t turn out to be so mysterious. Just orcs. An orc raid and the dead hastily buried before the orcs finished off the ones who could still dig. She found a few more graves like the long-haired woman, and after only a day or two of squatting, simply got bored.

Orcs weren’t mysterious. They pillaged and killed. She’d seen hundreds of sites buried under the mess they caused. A boring end to more than likely boring life, if the copper pots were anything to go by.

But that was years ago. Years before Linna discovered the lost civilization with the advanced technology. Years before her dear old dad roped her into figuring out exactly what they were. Years before her small-time crimes became big time smuggling. 

Years before dad bit the big one. Years before she vowed to figure out the mysteries he couldn’t. Years before she stopped sleeping and eating and threw herself in her work. 

And years before she got the Source.

Now, Linna chewed on her lip as she stared at the broken Eternal mechanism in her hand. It was cold and sharp, a piece of accidental shrapnel from long centuries of erosion under the earth. No longer elegant and useful, it now resembled some crude, childish tool. Or at least, that’s what Fane would say. She flipped it carefully over in her fingers anyways, while sitting on the side of the bed in her quarters, carefully taking in each divot and ding the long-forgotten mechanism had endured. Years ago, she’d spend months trying to piece together what this was.

Now she knew all the answers.

 _The Ancients_ , her father had dubbed them. _The Eternal_ was what they were really called. Couldn’t have been too Eternal if all that was left of them were dingy pieces of scrap like the one in her hands. Knowing it didn’t make it any better either. She’d spent so long building theories, traveling to sites, paying off thugs and thieves...and for what? All the answers to drop on her lap. It’s not as fun when the solution to the riddle is just handed to you. 

In fact, it felt as mundane as the long-haired woman’s grave. 

Distracted by her own self pity over getting her answers the wrong way, Linna let the mechanism slip through her fingers; but before she could grab it, it plummeted to the wooden planks under her feet with a hard _thunk_.

“Bollocks,” she mumbled to herself when she leaned over to picked up, but paused when she saw tiny splinters of the wood of the planks chipped away where a particularly sharp edge hit. “Oh, _bollocks_.” She hadn’t meant for the ship to get marred by her carelessness.

_Did Lady Vengeance feel that though? Could she feel that? Was she aware of everything happening on the wood of her ship-body? Could she be aware? How even was she aware? How did she come to be? And most importantly...why hadn’t she she questioned this before?_

Perhaps the whole Divine thing had clouded her brain. Or maybe she just didn’t care when there were more important things ahead of her. Or maybe she was just too wrapped up in her dad’s legacy that she didn’t realize she had her own to make. In that moment though, Lady Vengeance and her peculiar existence were all she could think about.

Linna’s head cleared of its previous melancholy over undesired answers and somehow found new puzzles for her to solve. Dallis’ old ship was nothing short of spectacular, and to her great excitement, a construct of great rarity. There was still something to be dug out in there, even this late into the night. And she always did like digging better at night.

She tossed the useless mechanism into a bin of rubbish she had managed to nearly fill, then slipped on her overcoat before making her way to the upper deck of the ship in search of new answers to new mysteries. 

\---

Wood never lasted as long as stone. It warped and got wet, then rotted away to a fine grit to feed the new life that sprung up. Even the tallest trees eventually got sick with the rot and died from the inside out.

Trees weren’t all that different than any other body. And just like other bodies, sometimes they came back. 

Linna didn’t know if she believed in souls and the likes of that. That is, until she got a rusty spear pointed at her in a tomb with an undead on the other end of it. It wasn’t much of a talker, that one, but in the time that passed, she’d found more and more. 

So maybe Lady Vengeance was like that. Like all the dead that didn’t stay dead. Like the ones whose souls were ripped from the Void and pulled back into bodies that had long ago did their part and fed the earth.

Or maybe it wasn’t like that at all. Linna would have to ask her to get the revelation she needed, but something interrupted her quest. 

When she opened the hatch leading her to the deck of the ship, for the first time since they’d escaped Fort Joy, the sky opened up. Stars upon stars upon stars, with no bright lights or impending attack to stop them from shining through. For a moment she forgot the questions she was looking for and was taken back by just how damned many of them there were.

“Looking for a lost love, Godwoken?”

Linna had been so distracted, she didn’t notice Malady standing at the helm of the ship, looking down on her in amusement.

“Lost love?” she questioned her.

Malady pointed her strange face towards the sky. “Up there. Ancient tales tell us that all the stars in the sky are a tapestry full of stories written in time. Great battles, tragic losses...lost loves.”

“I’d rather look in the dirt for stories,” she replied easily, her gaze following Malady’s back up towards the stars. “Though they are pretty to look at.”

“Most unobtainable things are,” Malady said with her usual lightness that bordered on frivolous. “They also never last...but I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Hah,” Linna breathed out a laugh. “Nope.”

Malady moved away from her perch at the helm of the ship and began to descend the steps that led to the main deck. “Well then. If you’re not out here to admire the heavens, then what does bring you up here in the middle of the night? More Void dreams?”

“Can’t have those if I don’t sleep,” she said slyly, then turned her head to the prow of the ship. “I came to get some answers.”

“And what answers does the mighty Godwoken lose sleep over, pray tell?”

Linna eyed Malady carefully as she approached her now. She was a whole head taller than her, with a spear that looked like it could skewer six of her. The half of her face exposed was entirely elven; with its round, moon-shape and long, intimidating neck. But the other half was covered in a brilliant golden mask, and she could swear that she saw a glint of mischief in the eye nearly covered by it. 

“I had questions about the nature of Lady Vengeance, but...you’re half elf,” Linna began. 

“Quite the perception.”

“And if you’re half elf, then you’ll know something about your people and how they end up in trees,” she finished.

Malady looked bemused at the suggestion, the corner of her lip curled up in a smile.

“It’s all a game for you, isn’t it?”

Linna’s brow creased, “What do you mean?”

“Figuring out the answers to questions no one ever asked,” she said amusedly. 

It was Linna’s turn to smile.

“I asked the questions. Does that mean I’m no one?”

“Quite the opposite, I’m afraid,” Malady responded smoothly, “A no one could ask all the questions they wanted, hoping one day for some answer. A Godwoken _makes_ their answers.”

“Ugh,” Linna groaned. “Where’s the fun in just making it up? Where’s the mystery? The suspense?”

“Hidden among the corpses you’d leave in your wake, I suppose. The path to Divinity is paved in blood,” Malady paused, then broke out into a full grin. “I’m sure generations of scholars in the future will have a grand time trying to find answers to the new questions you’ll make when they dig those bodies up.”

“Ha _ha_ ,” she answered laconicly. “A regular jester, aren’t you?”

“If the subject material is easy, anyone can be.”

“You are relentless, you know that?” Linna laughed. “Oh, and good at diversion. You’ve avoided my original question entirely.”

“It was so silly, I forgot what it was,” her brow on her uncovered side of her face rose mockingly. “Ah, yes. Something about me being an elf and knowing how elves wind up carved into massive warships, right?”

“Close enough,” Linna crossed her arms over her chest as she waited for her strange benefactor to respond. 

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed to know that me being half-elf is only a small piece of the fabric that has shrouded my life, and that single thread will never give you a vision of the entire tapestry.”

“You have a way with words too, I’ll give you that,” she said wryly. “Too bad it’s all horse shit.”

Malady’s eyes widened in surprise. Or, at least, she pretended to be surprised.

“ _Horse shit_? Why do you short-lived ones always have such vulgar mouths?”

“There’s that avoidance again…”

This time, Malady rolled her eyes. “What do you want of me? The part of me that is elf is a piece--”

“And a piece is all I need to see the full picture,” Linna cut in. She walked over to the edge of the starboard side of the ship, leaning her elbows on it, then waited to hear Malady’s footsteps following her before beginning to speak again. 

“When you’re digging up information? Trying to find answers buried under earth and time? All you have are the pieces,” she went on as she stared over the dark night sea. Malady leaned in next to her, watching her intently. “Picture a town. Just a regular town. Imagine it as clear as you can in your head.”

Malady closed her eyes, “Alright, I’ll play this game.”

“Good,” Linna said. “Now see it in your mind’s eye. There’s a town square, with a marble fountain in the middle. Nearby, a tavern with a sign hanging on the door that say _s ‘The Dirty Rat_ ’. A dwarven woman and a lizard man stand outside of it, chatting happily. Next door, there’s a small blacksmith shop. You can hear the sound of a hammer on an anvil, the blacksmith inside hard at work.”

“Mmm, yes. Town life. The same here as it is everywhere.”

“Shhh,” she hushed her. “Imagine yourself walking up past the inn and the blacksmith, past a baker and a small barracks for the token guard forces in the town. You walk past several homes that smell of stew cooking over a hot fire. You hear children screaming from somewhere near, playing a game that’s delighting them. You keep walking past cottages and a tanner and the estate of the local noble. You reach the outskirts of town and find where the good townsfolk bury their dead.”

“Naturally.”

“Now you enter the graveyard, and turn back around to take a look of the town,” she said softly, “but when you do, there’s nothing there but dilapidated buildings and dust. The town you saw so clearly is now gone.”

“Oh is it now? Then what was the point?”

Linna looked at her intently, watching for any change in her features as they played this game. 

“In an effort to figure out what happened, you begin uncovering the buried dead. In one plot, you find a copper mug, engraved with the words ‘ _The Filthiest Rat’_ ; a little joke between a husband and his spouse. The mug is as dry as the bones. In the next one, you find broken sword with an injured skeleton. The blade of the sword has its maker’s name and location; that same blacksmith you heard pounding away. You move on and find a grave with a child’s toys inside; they must have been playing stick and ball when you heard the joyful screaming. And at last, you uncover a noble tomb, full of riches and fine silks; more importantly, there is a dusty old journal, speaking the last words of that noble’s life…”

“And what does it say?” Malady seemed transfixed. 

“It says…’ _Until my last day, I curse Bright Harbor and anyone who sets foot in this wretched town,”_ Linna answered solemnly. “And you now have enough pieces to reconstruct the town in your mind, but with a brand new perspective.”

“A seemingly ordinary town,” she started, then sucked in a deep breath. “But nothing is as it seems. The bodies would tell the real story.”

“Yes,” Linna affirmed confidently. “The pieces make a whole, Malady. And the pieces are the only thing you can trust. Anyone who says they know the whole story without looking at the pieces are either stupid or lying.”

Malady stood silently for a heartbeat, her gaze leveled at Linna more intensely than she could have anticipated. She almost felt the need to swallow the spit that was sitting in her mouth out of nervousness.

“You know what the problems with pieces are?” Malady finally broke the silence. “No matter how many of them you fit together, there will always be something missing.”

“Yeah?”

She nodded, “Your little town may have been cursed, and you were clever to figure it out, but you never did learn why the tavern was called ‘ _The Filthy Rat_ ’. Or why the blacksmith’s sword broke during a battle. Or the rules of the children’s game.”

“But those don’t--”

Malady lowered her chin and stared down towards the churning sea below them, ignoring her objection.

“A vase made of clay may be shattered, and you may be able to piece it back together, but the cracks will always show. Nothing will ever align quite right ever again. No amount of time and study will ever restore the beauty that was the whole vase. You can reimagine, but never see what its creator originally intended.”

“I can damn well get an idea,” she argued. 

“An idea isn’t an answer, Godwoken. And so many of those who wander this world as mortal beings will never know that,” she replied with a sigh. “Only Divinity will allow you to see the whole picture without the cracks and seams.”

Linna shrugged her shoulders, unconvinced, “Source is going to give me that? Is this a ‘ _it was inside of you all along!_ ’ kind of speech?”

Malady barked a laugh, “Devils and gods, no! I’m trying to say that on your own, you’ll never figure it out.”

“No,” she disagreed, “You’re saying I can’t figure _you_ out on my own.”

Her smile warmed, and she looked upon Linna once more, “I’m made of too many pieces, Godwoken. No amount of study is going to fill in the gaps across my life.” 

Malady pushed off the edge of the ship and rested her hand on Linna’s shoulder gently, “But that’s enough talk for tonight. Let me the help you fill in the cracks on your journey while you try to get some rest. It’s the least I can do for a Godwoken, I suppose.”

And with that, the strange woman who appeared in Linna’s life like an apparition was gone just as quickly as one, leaving her with a peculiar sense of longing. Linna fiddled with her fingers for a moment, poring over her jumbled thoughts, before she decided to take Malady’s advice and try sleeping once again. 

Once below deck and in her cabin, Linna traced the outline of the stars she saw in the night sky on the ceiling as she mused over the mystery that was Malady. Her inhumanness, her frivolity, her sudden turn to seriousness...it was all perplexing. 

And despite their conversation, Linna couldn’t believe what she had said; there was _always_ a way to figure out the whole picture with just the pieces. So what if mundane details didn’t get filled in? The mundane was boring, and she doubted there was anything boring about Malady.

As she closed her eyes to finally find rest, she resolved to figure out just what made Malady tick. She’d uncover all the pieces, and then, smooth away all her cracks. There was no greater mystery to her now that she wanted to solve.

Linna fell asleep peacefully, the waves of the sea rocking her in the Lady Vengeance like a crib, and the thoughts of how the mighty warship came to be were long forgotten, only to be replaced by the tall, nearly golden riddle that Malady represented.

 


End file.
